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Integral Emergence vs. Co-evolution
Integral Emergence is a term you might hear used to describe how multiple aspects of reality arise simultaneously. This idea is important to any understanding of Pragmatism; and it is also central to Ken Wilber’s Integral Theory. In fact, Wilber credits Charles Sanders Peirce as an important inspiration for his own four quadrant model of integral emergence. One way to get a deep sense of the nature of what the term integral emergence is pointing toward is to compare it to another popular idea, that of co-evolution.
The concept of co-evolution has gained some popularity over the past few decades. The word refers to a situation where different things evolve together as part of one interconnected whole system. So as the plant life in a region evolves so too will the animal species in the same area. Today we often hear this word associated with the collective evolution of our species in a way that seemingly means that we as individuals will each take responsibility for our own growth and that together we will evolve into a new kind of humanity. This type of interdependent development of separate species or individuals is not the same as the type of emergence that the Pragmatists and especially Charles Sanders Peirce were envisioning when they created a philosophy based on a vision of evolution as a co-emergent process of creation.
To describe how I understand the co-emergence or integral emergence of Pragmatism I want to use a metaphor. Charles Sanders Peirce saw reality as emerging in the form of triadic relationships. I said in my last post that nothing exists independently and now I would add that Peirce believed that nothing exists except in triads. And through out his career as a thinker he came up with different ways to describe the essential triads of reality. As the originator of semiotics (the study of signs and symbols) he defined the basic triad as object-sign-interpretant. In his ontology he spoke about the triad of firstness-secondness- thirdness. The bottom line is that he believed that everything that exists does so, and must do so, as triadic relationships that are co-emergent.
Now for the metaphor, imagine a piece of blank white paper (or put one in front of you if you want.) Now draw or imagine a circle on the paper. What is the nature of the circle on the paper? A circle consists of three aspects. You can point to the “inside” of the circle. You can point to the “outside” of the circle. And you can point to the line or “boundary” that separates the inside of the circle from the outside. You cannot have a circle without these three elements. Can you image a circle without an inside? an outside? a boundary? Try to imagine it and you will find you can’t get your mind to go there – it is literally impossible to imagine, which Peirce would say means that it is impossible for it to exist. You could say that the circle must have been present in its potential form on the original blank white page, but it was certainly not there yet. And there was nothing about the page that lent itself to a circle any more than a square or a triangle or any other two-dimensional shape.
Now think back to when you were drawing the circle. As you drew the line that would eventually become the boundary it was already separating one side of the line from the other even before it became the closed loop of the circle. One of the sides of the line would eventually become the inside of the circle, the other side of the line would eventually become the outside of the circle. So as you were drawing the circle the inside, the outside and the boundary were all co-emergent from the start. This is how I believe Charles Sanders Peirce imagined everything emerging as triads. In our metaphor everything that could possibly emerge on the blank of paper must emerge as a relationship between an inside and an outside and the boundary that separates them.
The point that I am making is that the terms co-evolution and integral emergence are pointing toward something more profound than individual things developing together, they are expressing a vision of reality as a multi-dimensional emerging event. There is an absolute necessity for simultaneous growth not as two or more separate things that grow together, but rather as different aspects of one occurrence of growth. I believe that the circle metaphor helps convey this essential mutual unity. The circle is not built from an inside, an outside, and a boundary like a house is built from wood and nails. As you draw a circle you are automatically also drawing the inside of the circle and the outside of the circle simultaneously. These three aspects mutually define what a circle is and cannot be separated. That is why integral emergence may ultimately be a better descriptor than co-evolution because the prefix “co” implies multiplicity, where integration implies wholeness.
Integral emergence also has a more ‘whole-some’ sense about it, whereas “co”, seems to be more flatland and smaller in scale and scope. It is interesting how the language we use really does generate certain thoughts and perspectives, and then actually, it’s important to use the right language if we really want to convey something.
Jeff,
Thank you for this post – it is so helpful and provocative and it is a beautiful and simple discernment between co-evolution and integral emergence. I have a very real sense of what you are talking about – and very much appreciate that you could put in such clear words, also using metaphor in the way that you do. I think I have been thinking that co-evolution and integral evolution were the same because I do see that properties of an object literally cannot be separated from the object itself. And so I was imagining co-evolution as sort of a dance between “two” that is inherently the “one” (like inner and outer of the circle). But the circle metaphor you describe and the triad perspective bumps this to a very new level in my understanding, and it is a much more subtle and profound territory to think into, and a stretch at that! Great post!
~Andrea
the metaphor of the circle or triad of co-emergence is different from , yet includes, the concept of polarity, that every action has an equal and opposite reaction, and equilibrium is the fine line of balance between.
Or, ‘creation postulates a shadow to serve as a bound for the plenitude of a passive fructified principle to sustain and realise the power of the active generative principle’ – eliphas levi
Hey Jeff,
I enjoyed this blog post. Yes, the term “integral emergence,” reminds me of the Buddhist principle of dependent co-arising, or more unified and to the point: interdependence. That mind and matter are not separate entities which cooperate, in a kind of subject-object dualities, but instead function as a coherent and unified Mind–is the wisdom behind the great masters and sages. Wei Wu Wei had described that, “all objects are Subject,” and in the same way all we see is what we are. This really hones in on how much imagination partakes in the creation of reality, be the narrative scientific or mythopoeic. We really experience ecologies of mind just as we do biological rain forests. Inter-connection is where we begin.
At this time in history, perhaps these ideas are more than abstract musings; instead they are vital to budding planetary community that is complex, decentralized and participatory. What do we take from all this talk, from all these philosophers? Participation, creativity, Mind, ecology. Despite the darkness of these times, perhaps we are instead witnessing an overturning of the old and an emerging of the new. Our age is truly one of transformation!
What strikes me is as the circle is being drawn the inside and out side are emerging simultaneously.so the act of drawing which is creating the separation is what makes the distinction between the inner an outer which gives definition to the circle.
Hello Shamansun, I just took a look at your blog and really like what you are doing. I will think of something I could contribute and propose it to you. Thanks also for your comments here and I also believe our age is one of transformation – or at least it will be if we make it so.
Shamasun,
I also looked at your blog and it looks wonderful. Count me as a New Enthusiast…!
Jeff, I will be again the critics here, maybe because I am too much of a Platonician to be very happy with the triads.
One of the illumination of my intellectual life, was when I understood what Plato meant by “the idea of the circle”. You can draw a circle, of course, but the “idea of a circle” is something completely different. It is kind of already there, belonging to the Absolute, for eternity.
Think of what a circle means to you, go very abstract and let the mental image, or idea emerge in you, but don’t try to draw it for the moment.
Quite miraculously you will realize that you already know what a circle is, you know it absolutely, before even starting to think. The same happens for a square, or for a triangle. Those geometrical figures are kind of pre-formed in the human brain. They are a priori, as Kant would say.
Now let’s follow the pragmatists and draw the circle. Indeed then, there is the inside, the outside and the boundary. Well, well… the question I am asking is the following. Between the two approaches, the platonician one or the one of the pragmatists , which one do we you choose ?
For me no doubt, I am a platonician [ and also French, which maybe explains it], I am magnetically interested in “thinking with God”, with the Absolute, I want to follow the flow of pure ideas, so I choose to put the musics of the spheres before everything else, hence much higher than the drawing of the circle.
More drastically, I am not sure that the drawing of the circle has anything to do with reality of the circle; by consequence, I am not sure that the inside the outside and the boundary have anything to do with reality. A circle IS the idea of the circle before being a drawing, and in the idea of the circle there is no inside, no outside, no boundary. There is just the circle itself, as an absolute concept in its pristine purity.
I doubt very much that the circle emerges at all from these three constituents.
Jeff, your blog was fascinating for me, because for the fist time I understand my huge difficulties with Ken Wilber. For me he cuts every concepts into parts, where they should not be cut at all. My reaction to this approach is always very strong because this approach is essentially the same as scientific materialism. For example, the scientific materialists want to explain consciousness by some emergent collective activity of the brain. For example myself as a professional scientist, I study the phenomenon of cuprate superconductivity as the collective quantum emergence of the pairing between electrons. It is OK, it is where science is at the moment.
But I got convinced that the spiritual approach to Truth should be based on a completely different starting point, that we should learn how to think as a Whole, with Absolute concepts and entities and not add together any separate triads, even with different viewpoints.
The act of adding is already a terrible sin… from the platonician view point !
Thanks for the wonderful blog!
I was reading the site of Shamasun, which got me interested in Gebser again. It gives such an sense of what vertical evolution is. It is amazing to read about the early structures of consciousness: ‘earlier consciousness structures, such as those of tribal man or literate man of the high Bronze Age civilizations, do not just disappear, but sleep latently within the psyche as valid experiential modes unto themselves. Certain life experiences will activate and call forth these modalities, and once the consciousness structure has been activated, it actually changes the very physics of the experiences which the subject has. In the Magical consciousness structure, for example, space and time are a point-like unity in which there are no dimensions, since the world is intricately interconnected through magical pathways. The rational consciousness structure has its own laws, too, and the structure of its interior is that of a three dimensional world in which time and space are radically distinct from one another, and in which the subject and the object are locked into a fierce opposition. Magic is invalidated within this highly differentiated structure, which is evolutionarily late, since this consciousness is something that always evolves in late phases of culture or in the history of civilization generally speaking, just as the intellect does not function fully in accordance with its own powers until one reaches maturity’.
I listened to the tapes mentioned by Shamasun on Youtube about Gebser and at a certain point (part 3) he talks about vertical evolution going from the holy number 7 towards eight (= in German Acht – which goes to achtung=attention) which connects with the evolution from magical to naturalistic= three dimensional space (from heaven down to earth). This is really a very interesting tape, because in the beginning he is talking about a closed reality (the womb) and he is describing, through showing paintings- the opening up towards the outside world ‘the ceiling breaking open’. It is going from the inside to the outside..which is a shift of attention. It is interesting that William James at a certain point, points to Locke Hume Spencer etc. saying that they only focus on ‘experience’, which is ‘given’, while ‘attention’ is connected to ‘will’: ‘Attention’, implying a degree of reactive spontaneity, would seem to break through the circle of pure receptivity which constitutes experience. He says ‘millions of the outward order are present to my senses which never properly enter into my experience. Why? Because my experience is what I agree to attend to.
In the living Universe Dane Elgin writes that cosmologists expect that there are eleven dimensions instead of three and reading the above, that seems possible. He says ‘evolution of consciousness is only at its beginning’. Reading in the future evolution of Sri Aurobindo, he talks about triple transformation: First the way of the intellect or knowledge, second the heart or emotion (boundless Self, infinity of consciousness) and third the will or action. He says ‘a new consciousness begins to form with new forces of thought and sign, and a power of direct spiritual realization, which is more than thought or sign. Super-nature (3rd) is the full Truth-consciousness in which there can be no place for division and ignorance. Its fundamental character is knowledge by identity, in which the knower is one with that which is known. It is unable to achieve it with unaided Mind alone. Our efforts belong to the inferior power of Nature. For real transformation the being of super-conscience must descent upon us and there should be a total submission of our lower consciousness, the will for separate law of action. What he says is actually something like above: our inner world should brake ‘open’ to the outside world, only first it was inside-out, now it is outside-in..It seems these ideas connect to Teilhard de Chardin, Gebser and Steiner.
Teilhard does not consider the human species to be the epitome of the universe; rather, he believes that Nature provides us with yet another evolutionary opening…that of a “super-soul above our souls”, which also connects to what the Brahma Kumaris is teaching. It all points into a way: Teilhard refers to the super-human as the Omega Point. It is, for him, the apex of cosmic evolution. Teilhard, scientifically speaking, can only imagine what the reality of Omega might be like…a pure conscious energy. “In the discovery of the sidereal world, so vast that it seems to do away with all proportion between our own being and the dimensions of the cosmos around us, only one reality seems to survive and be capable of succeeding and spanning the infinitesimal and the immense: energy… that floating, universal entity from which all emerges and into which all falls back as into an ocean; energy…the new spirit.”
Liesbeth, this is really inspiring. I want to read Gebser again while reading this.
“only one reality seems to survive and be capable of succeeding and spanning the infinitesimal and the immense:”
This magnificent.
Dear Jeff,
I found a wonderful essay in Shamasun’s web page, about Rudolf Steiner. I feel the guy who wrote it really knows a lot and understand him.
What I would love to do is to have a discussion between the pragmatists’s way of doing philosophy and the mid-europe way, including France and Germany, who are Platonicians, meaning that thought proceed form ideas to things and not the reverse [ for the pragmatists].
I think it is the dichotomy and difficulty I am facing with Wilber, who is for me emblematic of a way of thinking of the pragmatists.
In the Steiner review I found at least one guy who thinks like me :
“The following essay is designed as a Rudolf Steiner primer. It should, if successful, give an overview of Steiner’s main ideas and convey to the reader precisely why and how he is important to the tradition of thought regarding the evolution of human consciousness. Ken Wilber overlooked him, but it is a safe bet that even if he hadn’t, he wouldn’t have known what to do with him, for whereas Wilber’s thinking is conceptually overburdened, Steiner’s is like a Persian garden full of lush, verdant, well-cultivated images. Those who read Wilber thinking that he is the final word on such matters would do well to pick up Steiner. They might actually find themselves opening towards a world that they didn’t even know existed.”
and as I learned form you and Andrew, one + one already make a culture. I feel we hit a very deep point here which is the deepest separation between mid-europeans and USA. Many times in a discussion we as european cannot understand why we have to go over tons of details before reaching an idea which we had from the beginning. We can get extremely frustrated about this.
My personal position is that both approaches are valid and important. As I said, as French I can be considered as a pure example of of the second approach of reality through pure ideas.
But this represent a very deep current in culture, and our world is completely unbalanced towards the pragmatist approach.
Forgot the WEb link about the Steiner’s essay that I find so good;
http://www.singleeyemovement.com/articles-a-essays/52-john-david-ebert/47-rudolf-steiner-and-the-evolution-of-human-consciousness-a-primer?showall=1
From Steiner’s review…
“Now it was at about this time that he began to compose his four mystery plays. He once insisted that if all his other writings and lectures were ever lost, his entire system could theoretically be reconstructed from the allegories contained in these mystery plays. However, the problem with the mystery plays is that they are humorless, bombastic and sanctimonious; exactly the things Nietzsche had accused of Wagner’s operas, only here those flaws are magnified. They are generally embarrassing reading and should be avoided at all costs.”
Guys, it is precisely what I am reading at the moment… and despite the obvious lack of humor, I happen to like the plays…
this is quite amusing !
Hi Jeff
The stark simplicity of the circle as an example of integral emergence shot off an understanding that was exceptionally immediate and profound. Thank you. I am excitedly contemplating the signifcance and consequence of this discovery with deep interest.
Regards
Imants
“Can you image a circle without an inside? an outside? a boundary? Try to imagine it and you will find you can’t get your mind to go there ”
Jeff,
I thought a lot about this, and I think we shall have a deep discussion about this issue which is utterly important. I am convinced that the idea of the circle exists prior to the ideas of its inside, outside, and boundary. As a re-form it definitely exists and human beings have access to it.
It is true that I cannot “get my mind to go there” but if I stop wanting to “go to the idea of the circle”, then I see that my mind is already there, that it already knows what a circle is.
And it knows it Absolutely with no hesitation whatsoever.
It is what I call “revelation” in sciences.
Some people call it mathematical mind, or like Blaise Pascal “Esprit de géométrie”[ geometrical mind] which he opposes to “Esprit de finesse” [ the pragmatic mind]
A physicist like Einstein, for example, will be almost entirely focused on using the geometrical mind, like Paul Dirac, like so many others. Once the idea is has come, in its pristine purity, then they will work out the details, not before.
New ideas don’t come only because people talk together or because one has experimented with one apparatus of life, or because, like in your example, one has drawn a circle.
Human beings have direct access to ideas, to pre-formed Forms of the Cosmos. i am absolutely convinced that I can get the idea of the circle without drawing the circle. For me, if not, there would have been no Science at all.
What I am talking about is a kind of Ground of Being of ideas. What you are talking about with the emergence through the pragmatic approach is the Authentic Self of creation of ideas.
Both directions are very important, and to be integral (for me) is first to reconcile both directions.
Unfortunately the post modern world seems to be strongly unbalanced towards the pragmatists approach ( guess why, we are so materialistic…).
I feel with all my soul that we have hit a very deep point, an enormous one, a crucial one.
I would love to have a deep discussion on this.
“Mind precedes matter in Steiner’s cosmogony, contrary to our current scientific way of thinking in which mind is an epiphenomenon of matter.”
here again we stumble on the same point …
Hello Catherine, I really enjoyed this post and it got me thinking a great deal about how to speak about the “Pragmatic Response” in philosophy. I think the way you characterize it here is mistaken. The Pragmatists were trying to find some middle way between rationalism on one side and empiricism on the other. So they did not see thought as arising from matter, they saw the two as coemergent aspects of one reality. I will think more about this so I can write about it clearly in historical context and I look forward to your thoughts about it.
One other thing Catherine. I agree with you that the idea of a circle exists prior to the ideas of inside, outside, and boundary. Still you can’t imagine a circle that doesn’t have an inside and outside and a boundary. Even that first intuitive circle that appears spontanioiusly in the mind has an inside and outside and a boundary, even before any ideas about these parts have arisien. I agree that this is an important discussion that I look forward to having with you and others here.
“Still you can’t imagine a circle that doesn’t have an inside and outside and a boundary.”
I am really not sure about it; it is my point.
I am so happy that you bring the discussion because we are precisely on the target.
Once the idea of the circle is “in me” then I can work with the circle and do all that I want. I don’t need to draw it in my head, to have the inside the outside and the boundary at all.
I just work with the idea of the circle itself, with the pure concept of it.
Those mathematical objects prior to drawing are really
already a mental image of some kind, but a very elevated one. They are precise, absolute, and incredibly quick to transform one into another, like in a symphony.
Of course I agree with you that mental images ( imagination) can also emerge from construction, like drawing the circle will make the idea of the circle emerge in you; but another way, another potentiality of the human mind, is to directly access them ( or create them; do we have the “same” image of a circle ? is there only ONE circle seen by thousand of eyes ? all fascinating questions… for later). When we do this the very idea of an inside, and outside and a boundary is not present. What we have is a sort of subtle and faint“color” or “smell” or harmony, subtle but a very precise ( infinitely precise ? that’s my dream).
It is for me what people call the musics of the spheres, and it is culturally the French and even more the German heritage [ but the war spoiled this]. What I called mid- european cultural heritage.
I agree that if you draw the circle you need to go through the inside, the outside and the boundary, but you don’t have to draw the circle at all to get a mental image of it. And an image of Absolute precision.
Moreover you can draw the circle and never have the mental image of “it” emerging. You can draw,draw draw, and all you see is the inside, the outside and the boundary, but you could also never see the circle itself.
Your blog has relieved me of a huge burden, because for the first time I understand that I cannot leave behind this approach of reality. I feel it needs to be re-discovered and put back to its right place, even in science where our heros are not any more the Eintein and Dirac , but the technologists, who try to re-construct their tools after having dismantled them.
I don’t think this way of thinking is backward or pre-rational [ it is incredibly rational on the contrary, once the concepts are apprehended in their purity]. For me this approach just cannot be left behind. It would be like a world without intellectual illumination, an horror of a world for someone like me.
It is really like a Ground of Being of ideas; their essence.
“So they did not see thought as arising from matter, they saw the two as coemergent aspects of one reality.”
Jeff, let me first clarify what the platonicians say. The platonicians say that you don’t need at all to draw the circle to see the idea of the circle. Reciprocally even if you draw the circle, you don’t necessarily see the idea of it. You might or might not.
You might draw all the day long and fail to see the idea of the circle emerge from the drawing. It is thus not enough to draw the circle to see the idea of it.
Hence the idea of the circle is disconnected from the drawing of it. For a platonician it is “prior” to it, detached from it. It is the world of Esprit Pur (Pure Spirit doesn’t look as great in English, actually).
L’ Esprit Pur exists, that is their message.
Seen from this point of view, the pragmatists are extremely different. For them the drawing of the circle is essential to the emergence of the idea of it. They would agree that the idea which has thus emerged is kind of “different” from the representation of it, of a different order, but still, any representation of it would have to keep the memory of the drawing, hence carry with it the inside , the outside and the boundary, as in your example.
For a platonician a circle is a circle, it has no inside, outside or boundary. We know precisely what is it since we cannot confuse it with anything else. It is an absolute Form which is not tributary from its own constituents to exist.
It is somehow an“enlightened object” it is free from its constituents.
The triangle has to get outside of its “three legs” to be really itself. I agree we touch mysticism here, but believe me the effects are very real when people like Eintein or Dirac use this ability of the human mind. [ as you guessed they are my scientific heroes]
So tell me, but I feel that I get quite a correct view of what the pragmastis say. It is juts that the platonicians say something completely different and absolutely fascinating, which has been for me the essence of my fascination for the world of ideas and of Science. Before being a Spiritual Scientist I am a platonician.
That is also why Steiner is so dear to my heart, because he is so close to the voice of Plato.
In any case the pragmatists are very important too. Sounds that both are essential and I dont’ really know the link between the two approaches and what each of them brings to Evolution.
This is very interesting. In philosophy there is idealsim and materialism. Both held that mind and matter were two seperate, free standing, parts of reality. Idealists saw ideas as the primary aspect of reality and matter emerging from that. Materialists saw matter as primary and all thought being a bi-product of some material interaction. The Pragmatists were motivated by a modernist’s love of science, progress and fear of absolutes on one hand and by an inclination toward mysticism and religion on the other. So on one hand the shared your fear that materialism would kill spirit and on the other they feared absolutes which were not accountable to their material effects. To understand this second fear it is helpful to realize that the Pragmatism was created in the wake of an American civil war which on the basis of idealistic beliefs had justified a conflict that claimed a full one fifth of the adult male population of the time. And so the conception of reality they derived was one in which mind and matter, body and soul, idea and world, were always co-emergent connected events. What they wanted to succeed in doing was injecting uncertainty into philsosophy. Our ideas had to be held loosely until they could be checked against their effects in the world. And the seeming certainty of the material world also needed to leave room for the reality of an immaterial spiritual internal aspect of reality. The external reality of matter and the internal reality of mind were equally real aspects of the one reality of the universe. Pragmatism solved certain problems and it proved to be a dramatically effective philosophy for navigating a Republican Democracy through the twentieth century. At the same time it has some obvious wholes and gaps and has left many problems yet to be solved in its own wake. You will be interested to find that in American philosophy Pragmatism was abandoned after world war II. It was picked up again in the 1980’s and is now leading toward a resurgent interest in Idealism and Transcendentalism. I look forward to continuing this discussion of the idealism of Plato and Idealism in general with Pragmatism and Empiricism.
Another way to put my point : you write
“You could say that the circle must have been present in its potential form on the original blank white page, but it was certainly not there yet. And there was nothing about the page that lent itself to a circle any more than a square or a triangle or any other two-dimensional shape.”’
what the platonicians would say is that even after you draw a circle on the paper, you still dont’ have `the idea of the circle” on the paper. Teh circle is thus not on the paper. The idea of the circle is detached from it, completely, it is not in the paper at all, before or after.
For the pragmatists, the drawback is that the ideas of the circle seems to have been stuck with the paper , the pencils, the drawing and representation of it. It is as if all their attributes were sticking to them in order for them to exist.
The platonicans adopt there an attitude very close to the one of traditional enlightenment : the essence of the circle doens’t depend at all of its attributes. It is already there. It doesn’t depend on matter and things to exist, it is prior to them.
They postulate that there is such a thing that the pure essence of ideas or pure spirits, and that is a denser reality than any representation of it.
Another way of saying the same thing would be the following. Drawing the circle is probably the most reliable way (on earth) to get to the emergence in me of the idea of the circle. But it is not the only way. I can get the idea of the circle emerge simply from memory and without any reference to the inside , outside or boundary.
Let’s go a bit further : If I am an illuminated enough intellectual, I can get in touch with ideas that I have never come close to, during my entire conscious lifetime. New Ideas can just show up like this, one day, and provoke a fantastic Eureka.
Then it will be up to me to find a new representation for them. People who invent mathematical concepts often go to such Eurekas, inventing new ideas.
So as a platonician, I would hold the very drastic viewpoint that for new ideas to emerge, I don’t necessarily need any representation. More, any representation can be a hindrance, since then the “new idea” would be linked with the previous old constituents which are already known.
We see that we are very far away form co-emergence, from people saying that ideas and mater emerge “together” as different aspects of reality.
For a platonician there is a strict hierarchy there. Pure spirit, Pure Imaginary exists. Ideas are thus prior to matter.
I love the idea that teh idea of circle exists somewhere outside of the representation of it and it helps me understand Steiner better. The place that I get stuck is in trying to imagine where the ideas exist. It seems to me to lead to a deeply dualistic transendent realm outside of this world. I am trying to find a way to think about it that makes it seem less mystical.
Dear Jeff,
the two messages seem to have crossed.
It is indeed very interesting. I have a lot to say to this, although I am not very cultivated on this matter.
One thing, you write
“In philosophy there is idealism and materialism. Both held that mind and matter were two seperate, free standing, parts of reality. Idealists saw ideas as the primary aspect of reality and matter emerging from that.”
For a platonician, at least for one like Steiner [ who if I understand well, is considered here as an idealist ]
mind and matter are not independent at all. They are pretty much inter-dependent.
But mind comes first. Precisely that means that matter without ideas is meaningless, but that ideas can exist without any representation, without matter.
It is a deep statement. So both are inter-dependent but hierarchically related.
It is just that mater without mind is incomplete, like a tree without leaves.
“Materialists saw matter as primary and all thought being a bi-product of some material interaction.”
this I completely agree with.
“Pragmatism solved certain problems and it proved to be a dramatically effective philosophy for navigating a Republican Democracy through the twentieth century. At the same time it has some obvious wholes and gaps and has left many problems yet to be solved in its own wake.”
this again, I completely agree with.
`You will be interested to find that in American philosophy Pragmatism was abandoned after world war II. It was picked up again in the 1980′s and is now leading toward a resurgent interest in Idealism and Transcendentalism.”
Yes, it is why I feel closer to someone like Bateson who for me is an absolute giant, than someone like Wilber who never deeply convinced me ( just an opinion here) .
Jeff I am not trying to create trouble here. It is just that we are hitting a deep cultural void between mid-europe and USA.
You would agree that since Ken Wilber’s philosophy is based on pragmatism, then it is a good bet to say that the whole Evolutionary Movement has a pragmatic bias. What I claim is that something terribly important is left behind : the world of Pure Ideas.
Does this world exists at all or is it a fancy of crazy scientist like me ?
I believe it does exist in a sense that it is “acting” and that for an intellectual, for a scientist, it is the world that is the closest to enlightenment.
In Evolution, pure Ideas are more subtle than Matter.
They are also closer to the Ground of Being than matter ( see my previous messages).
Matter without ideas doesn’t exist. Ideas without matter do exist.
The only reason why we don’t see this, is because we have taken the habit to always link an idea with its representation. As if matter was desperately sticking to ideas. It is even worse in our post modern world, pure Ideas seem to have collapsed into their symbols, they seem to exist only through their symbols.
It is my position that something terribly important is forgotten there.
My present view is that this being established, ideas of course do interact with matter, they are not separated from it.
How much this interaction is crucial for evolution and which form it takes, I have no clue. But putting ideas and matter on the same level as a starting point, like the pragmatists do, seems to me a weak form of materialism. For me the two are simply not equal.
Dear Jeff, Again the messages seem to have crossed.
“The place that I get stuck is in trying to imagine where the ideas exist. It seems to me to lead to a deeply dualistic transendent realm outside of this world. I am trying to find a way to think about it that makes it seem less mystical.”
At the question “where the ideas exist”, Steven Jourdain used to answer “in the pure Imaginary [ dans l’Imaginaire Pur]”. An answer I used to love [ so Frenchy…] because at the beginning, I used to laugh at him and tell him back that all he meant was a “pure imagination” of his. Then I understood that he was dead serious and all my work with him was to get a “sense” of this world, this Pure Imaginary. Now I can just testify that I am completely convinced that it is real, of an incredible reality, actually. It is really very very real, but one has to get convinced of it.
“How to get it less mystical”… you have me completely back close to Andrew and EN there. To say the truth [ I am serious about it] I am counting on you and EN to help there because I feel quite lost. It is indeed the big problem; this world is so though to communicate and articulate, and one looks crazy as soon as one does.
My hope is to make it less mystical by looking at the actions, the results that this world of ideas has on the material one. By linking it to Evolution for example.
Then indeed I come back very close to Andrew, since he is enlightened and Evolutionary ( which Steve was not, evolutionary, I mean); I want to see how this world of pure ideas interact with matter and what are the consequences for evolution.
One first remark though, look at Steiner ‘s legacy; isn’t it a paradox that someone so “crazy” so platonician as Steiner can get suddenly in a matter of a few years such a huge legacy in our material world and culture?
It always struck me. What a success.
Another example, take Albert Einstein, maybe the most mystical and platonician of all the physicists. Isn’t it very strange that he is the greatest of all, that he accomplished, in the material world, as one man, what random interaction between hundred of standard scientists wouldn’t have done ? what is the part of the platonician approach in this incredible success ?
Why is the platonician approach working so well for evolution , or sometimes not at all ?
I am reading Bateson recently [ thanks to your blog actually, I cannot thank you enough for this since this thinker is in the process of completely changing my life; thanks for the scenius you offer, really] and I stumbled on a strange comment on his; that what he saw in the Cosmos was not the less evolved part of the human brain ( of mind as he says), but the most evolved one. It is not the animal instincts that are the driving force of the cosmos but also some very refined intelligence.
I have to cite him better, but he is a wonderful mix of the platonician and pragmatists.
I have given this metaphor some contemplation and it keeps getting more and more fascinating.
One discovery has been that it appears the metaphor as described by you Jeff is presented from a two dimensional perspective – the circle as form on a plane.
If we take a three or four dimensional perspective of circle as it is being drawn and after it has been drawn an experience of the concepts of all three take on a greater and evolving in time depth and complexity, as does their relationship to each other and space itself until there is a point reached or emerges ( that sems to come and go, it is not permanent and fixed) of seamlessness between interior, outside and boundary – a point , a convergence where the primary Oneness of reality is realized and experienced. This demonstrates the rule that Perspective and position is everything.
Yes this topic is worth digging into more and more…..
Regards
imants